Category: Fear the Walking Dead

In the finale episode of Fear the Walking Dead season two, Travis is banned from the hotel for committing violence, killing the two American tourists for killing Chris and one of the survivors by accident. The rest of them decide to go with him, Madison and Alicia, wanting to go find Nick, while Strand stays behind. Meanwhile, Nick leads the colony away with Luciana, leaving a dying Alejandro to use the surrounding infected to kill the gang coming after them. However, at the border, Nick and the colony are stopped by what appears to be the same border patrolling, anti-immigrant nut-jobs who had taken Ofelia, and now have taken Nick and Luciana hostage as the colony flee.

Overall, the second season worked much better than I expected it would have in my opinion. I wasn’t expecting the like it as much as I did. There were some lower moments, but for the most part, I liked the season and can’t wait for the third.

Average grade for the season: B

HIGHLIGHTS

Alicia killed someone
when Travis was held at gunpoint with her knife. Not only did she kill someone, she killed someone she liked and had just been friendly with. She did so because she had to to save Travis, to save them all. And that’s what I love about Alicia and her steadily growing ability to get shit done when need be. She’s quickly becoming the strongest character on the show.

LOWLIGHTS

The cliffhanger
showing Nick and Luciana being captured and Madison and Travis just finding the colony as it’s empty of people and full of Walkers, still unable to find Nick, is troubling. I wish it would have ended differently. Even having Nick with the colony, walking toward a more promising future would have been solid, keeping my interest to know where they were going in the next season. Having them be attacked and then ending the season there didn’t work for me.

In the penultimate episode of season two, Fear the Walking Dead creates a fantastic episode that works on many levels. We learn the fate of Chris, the colony is in danger and Alejandro’s been lying about being immune, and Travis goes full on Hulk and kills the American tourists.

HIGHLIGHTS

Travis’s breakdown
in which he disregards his former stance on killing by beating the two Americans to death after finding out they’d killed Chris is one of the most intense, heartbreaking, and incredible scenes of the show. Madison not being able to get to Travis, an unstoppable force of anger, is heartbreaking to watch.

The flashbacks to Chris
being cruelly put down for being injured was terrifying to watch—and even though I wasn’t a fan of Chris—the saddest, most lonely (and preventable) death from the show so far. I stated in the last review that I hoped he was dead and now that I know how he died, I take it back. Going down the way he did was awful but, ultimately one of the best, most emotional parts of the episode.

LOWLIGHTS

Ofelia
is trying to get across the border, back to the US, and is captured by (what appears to be) some racist, anti-immigration-even-in-the-face-of-the-apocalypse man. Then we never see her again. Ofelia’s barely been in this half of the second season and I’m mostly annoyed. She showed promise in the beginning of the episode, taking out Walkers like nobody’s business, then she’s just not there anymore. Her story, since the very beginning of the series, has just felt pushed aside. I would like a full, Ofelia-centric episode in the future, thank you.

All seems happy and joyful in the Fear the Walking Dead episode “Pillar of Salt,” with the survivors at the hotel enjoying the benefits of the generator they have working—like ice and hot showers—and everyone is giddy, cleaning the hotel as if they’re ready to open. And then the mother of the bride, still grieving and distressed by Strand’s killing of her dead-daughter, stabs him in the stomach.

One of the colony’s men who deliver the Oxy to the gang tries to flee with his family, only to be caught by them. While getting medical supplies at the same grocery store where Nick and Luciana get water from, Madison overhears the man being interrogated speaking about a kid she thinks may be Nick—and it is, though she can’t confirm without them nearly getting killed—and once they return to the hotel, she takes a risk of turning on the generator and the lights to signal to Nick if he’s out there. The lights, however, gain the attention of a disheveled Travis, bearded and Chris-less, wandering in the dark. And at the colony, Nick sees the gang in the distance, having found their location.

Meanwhile, Ofelia travels around to different places she’s been in search for (presumably) her ex-fiancee—seen with flashbacks to when he proposed to her and when she was going to tell her mother, learning that she may change her mind in order to care for her parents.

HIGHLIGHTS

Travis looked alone
which makes me sort of excited at the possibility of Chris being gone for good—or as long as it takes for him to be less annoying. Then he can come back.

LOWLIGHTS

Ofelia’s story
really isn’t going anywhere. Her scenes were so few and far between in this episode that I’d forgotten she was shown in the beginning of the episode when her scene near the end came back. She didn’t really do anything but walk around, kill a Walker, and think about her past—giving us a few good flashback scenes, but otherwise, meh.

Madison’s judgement
when it comes to her kids is a little off. She seems to love Nick more than Alicia—and even Alicia is calling her out on it—but to the point that she nearly gets herself and Elena killed in the grocery store just to learn about Nick’s whereabouts. There comes a time when she needs to let him go—she spent a lot of time not knowing where he was before the world ended, so why is this any different?

Fear the Walking Dead deals with their first real encounter with a ton of Walkers that they need to get rid of/move—clearing the entire hotel to be a safe zone. Coming up with a solution to that is tricky, but with some help from the survivors left from the wedding, Alicia comes up with a plan. Meanwhile, Nick has an idea of making fake Oxy pills to gain more time to figure out what they’ll do about the gang trying to find their colony. He’s then given a trailer to live in and Luciana hears the news of her brother’s confirmed death—and starts to get close to Nick. With the hotel cleared, it’s now safe for them all to live peacefully, though the mother of the bride is still unwilling to welcome the others.

HIGHLIGHTS

Clearing the hotel
was one of the greatest scenes on Fear the Walking Dead. A brilliant plan, executed well, and nothing went wrong—no, not terribly exciting, but it kept you waiting for something to go wrong. It reminded me of the Walking Dead when they tried to move the enormous horde from the quarry this past season. Though a small-scale version, if that’s the kind of thing Fear the Walking Dead is doing this early in the game, I can’t wait to see how big the stunts/scenes they’ll pull off in the future are. Bonus points from me for having Alicia come up with the idea.

Another break from Travis and Chris
meant more time with Nick at the colony and the rest of the gang at the hotel—which right now, are the shows strong points. These storylines work best and I’m glad they’re stepping back a little from the father/son duo for a while.

LOWLIGHTS

Ofelia is still missing
and that worries me. I loved her character and I know that the truck is gone, meaning she probably took it, but she seemed way too distant and out of it to have a sound mind going out on her own for me to be comfortable. This is only a lowlight because I like Ofelia and wish she would come back.

Fear the Walking Dead’s tenth episode, “Do Not Disturb,” focused entirely on the stories of Travis with Chris traveling through Mexico and getting a ride from a group of young men who Chris stole food from; and Alicia, trapped in the hotel and needing to get back down to the ground floor, finding help with the surviving manager of the hotel who, as keeper of the keys, controls the hotel while the other remaining guests want her ousted and killed for locking them up during their wedding at the hotel because of the outbreak.

Because Travis and Chris are on their own, it’s giving their characters a lot more room to breathe while dealing with Chris’s problem with understanding what’s murder and what’s not. Travis just wants them to find a place to live at, a small little farm, something with water and safety, while Chris wants to keep moving, wanting to stay with the guys they meet up with. This brings them to a confrontation with a man with a gun, leading to Chris shooting him.

Alicia is continually becoming more bad ass and she proves her capability in this episode a lot. She’s smart, she knows how to survive. She’s eventually reunited with Madison and Strand with the help of the hotel manager Elena and her nephew Hector, after giving the hotel keys to the other hotel guest survivors, then opening the doors and releasing a horde of Walkers on them.

Overall, a good episode. Travis and Chris’s story is fine, interesting enough, but not doing much for me. Alicia’s story, however, was fantastic. I wish she’d get her own episode the same way that Nick did, because she’s really growing as a great character in this world.

HIGHLIGHTS

Alicia
is my favorite character so obviously she was the best part of this episode for me. She’s proving how well she can do in this world over and over. She’s made a few mistakes (even earlier this season) and she doesn’t always make perfect decisions (like yelling in the hall for Ofelia, leading the Walkers toward her) but she can hold her own.

Opening flashback
of the wedding worked really well. It tied in nicely with introducing Elena and setting up the dynamic of the survivors inside the hotel.

LOWLIGHTS

Travis and Chris’s story
is still making me not like Chris as a character. I know what they’re doing. He has a problem with understanding what’s acceptable in this new world regarding killing and protecting yourself. But I’m also kind of bored with it. I’d be fine if Travis ditched Chris and let him go with those guys they met, then went back to find Madison.

“Grotesque” starts off the second half of the second season of Fear the Walking Dead, following the character of Nick as he journeys on his own after refusing to leave the blazing Abigail compound with his family and return to the yacht.

Nick’s journey starts off with a mother and her son, sending Nick on his way through the desert toward the highway to Tijuana. On the way, he camps out in a thought-to-be-abandoned house and his attacked, forced to flee, losing his water; confronted by men with guns who kill Walkers—and anyone living; becomes desperately thirsty, attempting to drink from/eat a cactus only to become sick; is forced to drink his own urine; is attacked by two wild dogs; and continues on to Tijuana covered in Walker blood, limping with a pack of the living dead. He’s later saved by a group, led by a woman named Luciana, and is taken to their camp to be treated. There, he finds that they are not only a group of survivors but a—seemingly—thriving community. All the while, there are flashbacks to his time in rehab and the emotional scene of Madison visiting to tell him that his father—who paid Nick little attention, always tired—was killed in a car accident.

While an excellently done episode—I’d say the show’s best—it came at a time that I wouldn’t have expected it to. I’d rather have followed the main group (Madison, Alicia, Ofelia, and Strand) in this episode, leaving Nick’s whereabouts a mystery for a little while, or at least for the first episode returning. Either way, this episode was fantastic and brilliantly acted by Nick’s Frank Dillane.

HIGHLIGHTS

Frank Dillane
is an incredible actor and I love the character of Nick. His journey in this episode is rough, putting Nick through a lot—especially the emotional scenes of him talking about his father in rehab and finding out that he’d been killed in an accident.

Survival
is shown in the Walking Dead universe a lot, but it doesn’t show the truly hard things—somehow they always find water, they always find something and rarely show the harder moments. In this episode, Nick travels through the desert, desperate for water, and he tries to get water from a cactus, only to get sick from it and eventually drinks his own urine. It finally felt like theses shows were showing the rough stuff, not just talking about how rough it’s been.

LOWLIGHTS

The episode
should’ve been later in the season. Even if it was the next episode, it would have felt right in place. Since the group/family split up in the mid-season finale, I wanted to know what happened to all of the characters, not just Nick. If this first episode returning from break had been about Madison, Strand, Alicia, and Ofelia, leaving some mystery to where Nick has been, I would have appreciated this episode more. The pace of the episode was too slow after a break. When a show returns after a break, I want an exciting episode to start it off again. I want something to keep my attention to bring me back the following week (which of course I’ll still watch, I just wanted a more exciting first episode.)

The mid-season finale of Fear the Walking Dead made a lot of great moves for the future of the show that I can’t wait to see play out in the second half of season two. This episode, “Shiva,” set up a lot of changes to the show that will hopefully for the better and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the second half of the season in August.

“Shiva” starts with a scene from Daniel’s childhood, showing him staring down at a river full of bodies, a lone survivor crawling toward him for help. A man tells him to take a gun, forcing young Daniel to shoot the man. As his mental state deteriorates, the episode starts off after Strand shot Thomas. Everyone is shocked and Celia is furious at his betrayal and not allowing him to turn. She banishes Strand and the rest of them from staying, giving them until the next day to leave. Travis, having run off to find Chris, finds him holding a young kid at gunpoint as a hostage, telling the boy’s father to get Travis to leave. After they get into a physical fight, Travis decides to take off with just Chris, leaving everyone behind to take care of him. Nick gets Luis’s turned body back from the yacht to get Celia to let them stay, as long as Strand leaves.

While Strand digs the grave for Thomas, Daniel sees his dead wife at the gates, telling Ofelia that they must go to her. After a group of men try to stop Daniel from taking Ofelia, Celia has him bound and locked in a warehouse. He sees his wife, talking to him, and she enables him to set himself free and burn the estate to the ground. Madison knows that Celia’s hold on Nick is causing damage to the family and him, so she locks Celia away with the Walkers she’s keeping in a cell. As the estate burns, Daniel in the same cell as Celia full of the dead, the others escape—Madison, Alicia, Ofelia, and Strand try to get Nick to come with them, but after he lies to Madison and says he couldn’t find Travis—Nick promised him to let Madison think he just left—Nick figures out that Madison got rid of Celia. He refuses to go with them, walking through the her of Walkers covered in their blood undetected and ignoring Madison’s pleas for him to get in the truck.

A lot happened in the mid-season finale: we lost Daniel as a character, we lost Celia and the estate, and everyone is now split up, taking different paths, it left unknown if they’re going to be brought together again. I honestly think this choice will be for the better and I’m excited to see where they go with it in the second half of the season.

HIGHLIGHTS

Daniel’s heartbreakingstoryline of breaking down mentally and it causing his eventual death was the most interesting, best part of the episode. Daniel has been a great character and I’ve loved his arc—sad to see him go, but excited to see where Ofelia goes now having lost both her mother and father.

Chris’s story has picked up
a little and made it watchable. He held a kid at gunpoint and attacked his father. While still not a perfect arc, I’m excited to see where it goes now that Travis and Chris have made the decision to leave on their own, Travis knowing that he needs to be take care of his son without anyone else’s involvement.

Breaking everyone up
was a great idea. We’ll have to see what it brings with the second half of the season, but a lot of my issues with the show came from the characters having too much family drama with each other. With everyone split up, it might give all the characters a chance to grow on their own.

LOWLIGHTS

Celia was a great character
and the estate they were at was a great setting. I’m disappointed that it only lasted two episodes—for now, we don’t know where Nick might end up—and that Celia’s involvement is over. She could’ve had a great storyline and there could have been more there. I just felt too quick to end it there.

The sixth episode of Fear the Walking Dead, “Sicut Cervus,” took the characters from the yacht on the open ocean to their destination of Mexico, but life off the Abigail isn’t any better for our characters struggling to survive—nor is the show any better off the water than it was on. That’s not to say that the episode wasn’t great and didn’t work well for the story the show is telling, just that it’s still not as great as its original sister show, The Walking Dead.

“Sicut Cervus” starts off with a scene of a church-full of people in a Mexican town, taking communion during the apocalypse, planning to leave. Thomas Abigail rushes to them, begging them to stay, but all of them begin to bleed from their eyes and noses, poisoned to prevent them to leave. The rest of the episode sees our characters make it to Mexico after a struggle to get through across the border, losing Luis in the fight. After an encounter with a church-full of Walkers, they make it to the estate to find Thomas Abigail bitten, dying from infection, and the caretaker Celia, Luis’s mother, in either denial or delusion that Walkers are not truly dead, and by killing them, that will kill kill them. Nick starts to bond with Celia, beginning to believe what she does, too. When Chris, thinking Madison didn’t believe him about shooting Reed, does nothing to help her when attacked by Walkers, Alicia witnesses it and confronts him. After Chris threatens her, Alicia and Madison stick together while Travis defends his son. Later, as Strand shoots Thomas in order to save him from life as a Walker after promising a double suicide—via poisoned communion wafers, revealing Celia’s poisoning of the church—Chris is found standing in Alicia and Madison’s bedroom with a knife after wanting to apologize, startling them and causing him to run from the estate. Meanwhile, Daniel’s mental state is getting worse as he hears voices and dazes out, worrying Ofelia.

Overall, a good episode, even with its few issues. The opening scene of church-goers dying horrific deaths really started off the episode perfectly, adding an extra bit of horror and mystery. The episode was entertaining and brought a lot of interesting story arcs to work with for future episodes. The mid-season finale

HIGHLIGHTS

The church scene
opening the episode really worked well. The scene was horrifying, something completely different that surprised me—an entire church of people starting to bleed from their eyes as Thomas Abigail came to convince them to stay and then all die was terrifying and a great opener for the episode. To later learn that it had been Celia who had poisoned them via the communion bread—even better.

Moving off the yacht
for a while was a great idea. Though I liked the idea of being on a boat during this season, it started to not work very well. Without the threat of Walkers, their only choice for tension—other than the annoying family drama—they had to resort to an outside threat of people taking their boat. After that happened, what else could go wrong on the boat to bring the show moving? Getting to Mexico, even if it’s just a for a while (I suspect it might, since Celia seems crazy and they will probably want to leave now that Thomas is dead and Strand shot him) to give the show something to do without the yacht for a while. I do hope we get back to the yacht, however, eventually. Thought I’m not sure what they’ll do once on it.

Strand losing Thomas
was sad. The moment I saw Strand see Thomas’s truck at the church, calling out his name in a panic, I knew my previous thought of Strand not actually being in love with him was false. There’s no way. It wasn’t just one sided, he wasn’t just using Thomas, it was real. Which made him finding Thomas at home, bitten, and then having to shoot him after he died (after lying about both taking their own lives from the same poisoned communion bread as Celia gave the church) even more sad.

Celia
is clearly a little insane. She’s like some sort of cult leader, believing that the Walkers aren’t dead, just different or sick. She seems to be getting a hold on Nick to believe the same and it’s obvious that something not right with how she’s handling things. The woman playing her, though, is fantastic. I love Celia as a character and I know that somethings going to go down in the mid-season finale.

Daniel is actually going crazy.
He’s hearing voices, staring off in a daze, having flashbacks of when he was a kid. Something is going on with him and I fear that it’s not going to be good for the rest of the characters if he starts having some PTSD flashbacks of his past, hurting someone else. But I’m interested in seeing where it goes, especially in contrast to Chris’s pseudo-insanity, mostly just being dramatic.

LOWLIGHTS

Chris’s storyline
is getting a little out of hand. I’m not such a fan of Chris turning into…what, a murderer? I get what’s happening and what they’re doing, and I would like to see it go somewhere good, but the whole thing seems a little ridiculous. If they handle it better in the future, I might warm up to the idea, but right now it’s just not working for me. Especially the scene where he went into the room with a sleeping Alicia and Madison, picked up the knife (why? why? WHY?) and when they woke up, took off, making it seem like he was going to murder them in their sleep (to them). I just rolled my eyes. If we’re going to make him go insane and start slashing people, let’s do it right and do it strong. Or have him move on from this already. I’m just not into it.

With each episode of Fear the Walking Dead’s second season, I enjoy it more and more. The fifth episode, “Captive,” worked well to move the characters along toward their goal of getting to Mexico, to a safe zone, but this episode worked best at giving one of my favorite characters on the show, Alicia, a place to grow and become her own character, rather than stay as “one of the teens.”

After Connor’s group, headed by his brother Reed (played well by Jesse McCartney) had taken over the yacht in the last episode and kidnapped Alicia and Travis, our main characters took back control of the Abigail and captured a fatally injured Reed.

While Alicia is brought to Connor’s boat, a land-docked ship, she realizes that there isn’t a way out. She is taught by Jack to scan the radar for vessels to raid, but when she learns that one of them is the Abigail, she realizes that her family couldn’t have been brought to land in time, and that they might be in danger as Jack says Reed often kills their targets. He agrees to help her find them. They find Travis locked up in a cell—who had been taken specifically by Alex, who is with Connor after they stranded her and the injured kid, whom she had to kill and blames Travis for not letting them on. Alicia now knows that it wasn’t only her fault they were targeted. Alicia promises to go back for Travis once they find her family on the Abigail.

Reed taunts Chris, who guards the door he’s captured in, and Chris shoots him—telling everyone that he died and was about to turn, so he had to, but no one believes him once Reed turns anyway, screwing their only plan to trade Reed for Travis and Alicia. Madison uses Walker-Reed with a hood on, trading him for Travis, and once Reed’s hood is taken off by his brother, Reed attacks and kills them while Madison and Travis get away.

Alicia had gone back for Travis, sees his cell empty, and is attacked by the pregnant woman. She fights her off, locking her up, and makes it up to the bow to see that Madison and Travis are safe. After Jack begs her to stay, Alicia chooses her family, jumping off the ship, sliding down the side and into the water to be rescued by Madison and Travis in the skiff, taking her back to the Abigail.

Overall, a fantastic episode. Alicia’s storyline really shined in this one. And there were several great moments of intrigue (Daniel hearing a voice, alone in a room with Walker-Reed; Alex’s motivations; Chris shooting Reed; and of course, Strand and his motivation to get to Mexico) which kept the episode moving, having all the parts connected and creating a solid episode from start to finish.

HIGHLIGHTS

Alicia being more active
and smart (like she’s been introduced as, but not recently shown) was fantastic. She really shined in this episode, all on her own with the people wanting to keep her for their crew instead of allow her to be with her family. Having her in this more active role of wanting to escape and using Jack to do it, determined to go back for Travis, and ultimately choosing her family over Jack (in the best way possible; her literally jumping ship and sliding down the side to the water was awesome)—all a big thumbs up from me. Alicia is one of my favorite characters on this show, and she was at her best in this episode.

Jesse McCartney
did an incredible job acting as Reed. I hadn’t expected his performance—and in the last episode, I was sort of unsure of him even being a part of the show—but he did a surprisingly great job acting as the sociopathic brother of Connor, the other group’s leader. And the entire storyline of him being injured and captured, killed by Chris, turning, and then used to trade for Travis was fantastic.

LOWLIGHTS

Alex is with the crew
and I was glad to see her there for only one reason: it means she lived, obviously, and there’s a possibility of seeing her again. Other than that, I thought it interesting to have her be the reason they captured Travis but there really wasn’t anything else there for her or for that storyline. I’m hoping this was just a hint that she’s alive and that we’ll see her again—and maybe she’ll still want revenge on them for letting the kid with her die. I’m hoping we’ll see her again as a series regular.

(NOTE: I have had an insane week and had little time to gather my thoughts as I usually do for the show, so I’ve written this after seeing the next episode following episode 5 as well. Which I also enjoyed.)

Episode four, “Blood in the Streets,” is the best episode of the season yet, and quite possibly of the series. I’m thrilled with the direction of this episode, specifically the backstory of Strand, the reveal of Abigail’s namesake, and the takeover of the yacht by the people Alicia had been talking to over the radio in the first episode. This episode has started what seems to be the arc of this season, with both Alicia and Travis taken in hoods by the leader of this other group, potentially leading to more interaction with them for quite some time.

While Nick heads ashore to meet with Strand’s contact, Louis, to get them into Mexico, the yacht is taken over by the group Alicia had been talking to in the premiere. Headed by Reid, a sociopathic Jesse McCartney—I was initially wary about him, not knowing what to think of him in the role, but he did a great job—feigning an emergency with their pregnant companion, get on the yacht and quickly take control as Strand had attempted escape via raft, being shot down by the captors.

The episode also follows Victor Strand’s backstory, starting with him having lost everything during Hurricane Katrina, stealing from a man named Thomas Abigail—the owner of the yacht—who, instead of punishing Strand, obligates him as an employee and they become lovers (either one-sided on Thomas Abigail’s part, with Strand having some sort of motivation for pretending to love him, or both truly caring for one another). Nick goes to meet with another one of Thomas Abigail’s employees, who will get them into Mexico—though he can only let in two, Nick and Strand.

With the group all tied up and live threatened if they’re not able to start the boat, Travis hot-wires the yacht to get it going, while Daniel and Madison attempt to distract the others and defend themselves. After Travis and Alicia are taken by the leader, Nick returns with Louis, shooting the remaining captors and seriously wounding Reid. With Louis there, Madison and the others save Strand from the water, bringing him back aboard.

HIGHLIGHTS

Strand’s backstory
makes this character even more interesting, revealing how he came into his money, the namesake of the Abigail is a man named Thomas Abigail, and that his employer and lover is that same man, both gives us a little more about him and furthers the mystery of Victor Strand.

Crisis on the yacht
with the captors taking over and waving guns around made for a great episode, getting into a larger story for this season with trying to get to Mexico, this being a big bump in that plan now that Alicia and Travis are taken. The episode just worked and Jesse McCartney as the sociopathic villain was surprisingly great.

The opening scene
with Nick finding his way through the abandoned survivor’s tent-town, killing a Walker and spreading the blood all over him to get by other Walkers was both disgusting and awesome. Nick works in this world well and I like watching him explore it.